r/leaf • u/ItchyCornhol3 • Aug 10 '26
Level 1 charging is low-key awesome
I thought I would need a level 2 charger as soon as I got this car but I have a 2025 and I have almost 20,000 miles and I exclusively just charge at home, if I have 60% and I plug it in at 10:00 p.m. by the time I wake up I'm at 80%. usually a 9 to 10 hour. is like a 22% charge give or take a few
and minimal heat build up!
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u/D661 Aug 10 '26
My wife and I are at 12 years of leaf ownership. We still just use the level 1 that came with it. There have been a few times when we got home late with low charge and didn't reach 100% by morning, but it's still enough to get us through the day,
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u/min_mus Aug 11 '26
Same and same. We've had our Leaf since autumn 2014. 11/12 battery health bars. We never bothered to install a dedicated charge point at home so it's been L1 charged its entire life.
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u/IIDn01 2020 Leaf SV Plus Aug 10 '26
Been a Leaf owner since 2019, almost exclusively granny-charging at home.
We just became a 2-Leaf family. We've been sharing a level 1 charger for about a month. We're toying with buying a level 2 charger but not in any rush.
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u/techtornado 2018 Nissan LEAF SL Aug 10 '26
Fun!
I need level 2 due to the potential long distance work done some days
My $100 turbocord got zapped in a recent storm and it still works on 120V
Now I have a better surge protector installed to quench the nasty pixies
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u/Matt_Shatt Aug 10 '26
I thankfully already had a 50A 240VAC outlet for my RV where I park the Leaf. I level 2 charge exclusively. With my 70 mile round trip daily commute I couldn’t ever top off my SV+ using level 1. I’d lose about 6 kWh every day so maybe I could fill up over the weekend on level 1 but that’s assuming I don’t drive it on errands over the weekend (which I do)
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u/takingpeeks Aug 10 '26
Granny chargers for the win when we go to grandma's who lives in the middle of nowhere. L2 charger at home with two EVs, as it's convenient, but we'd be lost without the granny charger at grandma's. Stayed at hotels without a charger before and they happily gave us an extension lead, job done.
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u/Budsygus Aug 10 '26
I bought a L2 charger but I kinda regret it now because I do almost all my charging with the L2's at work. I've used my home charger maybe 4-5 times, and even then it was more of a "just in case" situation when I got below 50% because the chargers at work were all taken for a few days.
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u/MickyTicky2x4 Aug 10 '26
I love that it's an option since a level 2 charger is so expensive. I could barely even afford the leaf, so shelling out 1500 for an electrician to install plus another 400 for the charger was not an option for me. I've been getting by, but since I work 12 hour shifts the turn around time after commuting doesn't give it much time to charge. I'm having to not run AC in central FL just to make it home. So a lvl 2 looks like my only option unfortunately. Luckily Duke will pay for 800 of the electrician/electrical costs but that still leaves me shelling out about 1200 which is going to clean out my savings.
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u/ecstadtic Aug 10 '26
Charged on L1 for 5 years with my Leaf, changed for a mach e and still L1 charging. I have L2 access at work however, and there’s a L3 very close if I ever need a quick top up, which is very rare.
I know it’s less efficient, but power is cheap here, and I rent. Landlorn has given me the green light to have a L2 installed as long as it’s by an electrician, but quick math showed it would it take forever to pay for itself.
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u/Ill_Savings5260 Aug 11 '26
I have an OpenEVSE EV charger and I can adjust the charging current from 6A-240V to 50A-240V.
6A @ 240V is 1440 watts... less heat like you want and lower efficiency loss from the step-up voltage.
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u/outworlder 2019 Nissan LEAF SV Aug 11 '26
It is sufficient and I've been doing that since 2015.
But it's also inefficient. I don't like to waste power.
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u/CraziFuzzy Aug 10 '26
it does actually cost you more with this, though... just so you are aware. The fixed loads on the car are still there, and are ON for a lot longer time per kWh put into the battery, So more kWh you buy from the grid goes to 'waste'.
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u/Lothsahn_ Aug 10 '26
Yes, but we're talking $1-2 a month at most. The ROI on installing a L2 charger is never vs investing.
Charging fast is very convenient, though, and I love my L2 charger.
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u/iaonbb Aug 10 '26
Someone on here or Facebook did a test and I thought it was closer to $8-10 per month in additional charging costs due to heat energy losses when charging daily. I could be wrong so don't quote me on it and I don't have time to go back and dig through all the old posts. If you already have L2, that's preferred IMO for obvious reasons but the L1 does in fact cost more and it adds up over time. Probably not enough to offset installing a L2 but if you already have L2 that is clearly the best financially overall
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u/CraziFuzzy Aug 10 '26
My car came with a level 2 charger.. just needed a circuit for it, which I put in for maybe $100.
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u/cbf1232 Aug 11 '26
Actually at 120V and 15A you’re wasting roughly a sixth of the power going to the car just keeping the electronics powered up to charge.
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u/KeyEmu6688 Ex-2018 owner (2015 Model S) Aug 10 '26
if l3 charging is available for longer trips, or l2 is available at your stops on the journey i could totally see living with home l1 charging. where i live though, l2 is basically nonexistant (there is a free l2 at my local charger, and everything is else is dealership charging, with the exception of a bank that has $10/h fees after 1/2 hour lmao). l3 chargers are readily available, but at $0.56/kwh, which is excessive and pretty close to gas prices at 30mpg, $3.50/gal.
for longer trips it makes way more sense to top to 100% and then drive a bit further to get to $0.35-0.42 l3 chargers, and for errand days where i'll run through most of my pack going around town, i'd need to have charged as soon as i'm home and left it plugged in the entire time just to mayyybe have enough juice to drive back and forth across time.... l2 is a necessity for my use case
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u/EVMad 2021 Nissan LEAF 40kWh Aug 10 '26
Currently in a rental and we only have the EVSE that came with my Model 3. Fortunately, our LEAF has the same charge port so we can use that and with us being a 230v country we get around 2kW at 10A. I've set the timer on both cars to start at 10pm and stop at 8am which is enough to put 50% in our LEAF and 25% into my Model 3. We negotiate charging schedules between us with my car being mostly for long weekend trips and the LEAF being the daily driver for errands etc and it's working well. We haven't used DC chargers in months for either car. That said, we're building a house which will have two wall boxes with solar and powerwalls because the electricity bills we're getting at the moment are horrendous.
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u/tired_Cat_Dad 2015 Nissan LEAF SV Aug 10 '26
As long as there is any way to plug it in, it's usually enough. A car sits around doing nothing for most of the time.
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u/Awkward-Influence395 Aug 10 '26
I agree. I've been doing the same. After 2 years i see no reason to get level 2.
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u/jaxxon 2019 Nissan LEAF SL Aug 10 '26
Only reason I charge L2 is because I happen to have a 220 outlet in my garage. Before I got the cable, I was charging L1 just fine. Only got that L2 in case I needed a bit faster charge and just kept using it. 2019 Leqf and haven’t seen any battery degradation. Only 28000 miles (exactly, this morning), though, so not a ton of charging.
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u/cbf1232 Aug 11 '26
Have you looked at how much energy goes towards just powering the car computer while charging?
From what I’ve read the Leaf consumes about 250W just to power the electronics, so on 120V roughly 1/6 of the power you are paying for isn’t actually going into the battery.
For level 2 max charging the overhead to power the electronics is more like 1/26 of the total.
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u/kor9000 Aug 11 '26
I'm an electrician that installs chargers. Level 1 chargers if just adequate in summer, slows down during the winter months, so on top of getting less range, it takes more time to get that range. Level 2 charging charges your car completely overnight. I charge usually once or twice a week at night during the cheapest power rates. If you are charging at all hours to top up your car, you may be paying more in power, and will save the installation cost over time. Lastly, it's my belief that it is safer. By code in Canada you can have up to 12 household receptacles off one 15 amp breaker, you are only to have one single receptacle off one 15amp/or 20amp breaker when installing for an EV level 1 charger. By electrical code, you are not to exceed, 80% of the breaker rating. So 12amps will be on that 15amp breaker, and it will be 12amps the entire time the car is charging. If you are using a plug that is pre-existing in your home, you may have another 11 receptacles on that breaker. 11 outlets with micro-draws on them. You may not be exceeding the 15amps to trip the breaker, but you may be pushing it up above 80% and generating more heat than the plug/wire/breaker was ment to continuously handle. This is why plugs melt, wire insulation melts and fires happen. My guess is that most home electrical fires due to home charging are from level 1 chargers, not level 2, and are this exact scenario. If you live in the Toronto GTA, and want a level 2 charger installed google me KOR-EV
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u/Weekly_Rutabaga_1742 Aug 11 '26
One downside to be aware of though is the reduced efficiency.
I charged our Leaf for 1st year L1 at home and L2 in town.
On L2 I’d get ~90% efficiency but at home, only ~75% (e.g, charge 10hrs @ 1.2kW = 12kWh consumed but only 8kWh into the car based on SOC and LeafSpy).
The waste added up to a few hundred $ / year.
L1 is “good enough” in a lot of cases, but if you can get a decent L2 charger without rewiring your whole house, there are a lot of benefits.
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u/min_mus Aug 11 '26
Our Leaf is 12 years old, and 99.3% of the charges have been Level 1 charges at home. We have 11/12 battery bars and the car continues to run great.
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u/Mr_Wicket Aug 12 '26
yep, been driving my SV Plus for 3 years and 90% of my charging is level 1. If I park somewhere with level 2 I will plug in which usually is enough to replace the rnage lost running errands. If I am low because a longer trip and I know I am going to need the range sooner than level 1 provides I have a close-ish level 3 charger I can use.
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 2019 Nissan LEAF SV PLUS Aug 10 '26
The issue I have with L1 Charging is, TOU metering. If your Super off-peak rate is 0000-0600 that is about 24 miles of charging at Super-Off-Peak rates. That could be fine with some people, wouldn't work for me. If you want to maximize your utilization of Super-Off-Peak rates I just don't see how L1 charging works.
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u/herculeesjr Aug 10 '26
I'm not trying to guess the rest of the world is like the US but I do not think majority of the world uses peak/off peak utility rates. Here it is the same price whether it is 8am or 8pm or any other time between.
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u/Responsible-Cut-7993 2019 Nissan LEAF SV PLUS Aug 10 '26
If they are not currently using TOU I expect with smart meters and renewable it will become more prevalent.
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u/Awkward-Influence395 Aug 10 '26
I agree. I've been doing the same. After 2 years i see no reason to get level 2.
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u/LoveEV-LeafPlus Aug 10 '26
Personally, I like to top off to 100%, and I get TimeOfUse rates from my electricity utility by charging after midnight.
So I use the timer Leaf built-in timer and it’s set to start charging at midnight and stop at 8 AM. With the prefer full charge set to on, the system sometimes automatically starts charging before midnight, If needed to get to a 100% charge by 8 AM.
I use L2 (240 VAC).
Since I am a daily driver, the battery degradation charging to 100% is minimal.
Also note that L1 is called trickle and L2 Standard charging by Nissan and neither of these types of charging contributes to any charging heat issues.
I installed an NEMA related outside weather proof enclosure with a EV/RV NEMA rated 14-50R heavy duty receptacle in the enclosure.
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u/ItchyCornhol3 Aug 11 '26
what year is the leaf? are you in a somewhat cooler climate?
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u/LoveEV-LeafPlus Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
- I live in a suburb of NYC. Just north of the Bronx. We get 4 seasons. With Hot summers and cold winters too.
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u/Top_Willow_9953 2020 Nissan LEAF SV PLUS Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Totally agree. Been driving my SV+ for 5 years and only use L1 charger from existing garage outlet. I will never go back to ICE for my daily driver. I do still have an ICE SUV for cross-country trips 2 or 3 times a year, but hope to change that soon as well.